Perp DEX With Zero Maker Fees (2026)

What a maker fee actually is

When you place a limit order that sits in the book and waits to be filled, you are a maker. You are adding liquidity. When you place a market order or a limit order that fills immediately, you are a taker. You are removing liquidity.

Maker fees reward limit-order traders. Taker fees charge them. A negative maker fee — a rebate — means the venue pays you for every limit order that gets filled. DESK pays -1 bps on every filled maker order. Place a limit order for a $100,000 BTC position, get filled, and earn $10 back. That is before you capture any spread between your limit price and market price.

The table above ranks by maker fee from lowest (most negative) to highest. DESK at -1 bps leads. GRVT pays a small rebate of -0.1 bps. Drift Protocol pays -0.25 bps. Below those three, several venues charge zero for makers — including Lighter, Paradex, Orderly Network, and Jupiter Perps.

Who benefits from maker rebates

Market makers. Traders who quote both sides — bids and offers — earn the rebate on each filled side. On DESK at -1 bps, a market maker filling $10 million monthly in two-sided flow earns $1,000 in rebates from the maker program alone, before any spread income. For a professional quoting operation, the venue's maker rebate is a direct line item in the P/L.

Limit-order-only traders. Some systematic strategies only enter on limit orders, never on market orders. If you exclusively use limit orders for entry and close positions only when filled, a maker rebate turns your execution cost negative. Every fill earns money from the venue on top of any strategy return. This is an unusual dynamic in perp markets and only a handful of venues offer it.

The catch with maker rebates

Maker rebates are cheap to offer when volume is low. A venue earning 5 bps in taker fees can afford to give 1 bps back to makers and still keep 4 bps net per traded dollar. DESK's model: -1 bps maker, +1.75 bps taker = 0.75 bps net per two-sided dollar. That is a thin margin. It works with sufficient taker-side volume. If taker volume falls, the rebate is harder to sustain.

Lighter's zero-fee model is even more dependent on volume: it earns from premium account subscriptions (0.002% maker / 0.02% taker for priority queue access), not from the standard trading spread. PerpFinder observes Lighter's volume fluctuating significantly — it peaked at $300 billion weekly in November 2025 before falling to under $50 billion weekly by February 2026, per DefiLlama's tracking. If zero-fee economics prove unsustainable, fee structures can change.

Pick zero-maker-fee venues if...

You run a systematic strategy using limit orders exclusively. Model your monthly volume at /tools/fee-calculator — the difference between 0 bps and 4 bps maker computes quickly and the savings are real.

You are a market maker looking for rebate income. DESK's -1 bps and GRVT's -0.1 bps are the only two venues currently paying positive rebates. Both are smaller venues than Hyperliquid — liquidity depth and spread capture potential are correspondingly lower. The rebate supplements spread income, it does not replace it.

Skip this page if...

You trade on market orders. Maker fees are irrelevant for taker flow. Your cost is the taker fee regardless of what the venue charges makers. See the low-fees page for the taker fee ranking, or the full perp listing which shows both maker and taker fees side by side for every venue PerpFinder tracks.